S/J7. JAMES Y. SIMPSON. 129 



Other pursuits become insignificant in their objects when 

 placed in comparison with this. The agriculturist bestows all 

 his professional care and study in the rearing of crops and 

 cattle ; the merchant spends his energies and attention on his 

 goods and his commissions ; the engineer, upon his iron wheels 

 and rails ; the sailor, upon his ships and freights ; the banker, 

 upon his bills and his bonds ; and the manufacturer, upon his 

 spindles and their products. But what, after all, are machinery 

 and merchandise, shares and stocks, consols and prices current, 

 or the rates of cargoes and cattle, of corns and cottons, in com- 

 parison with the inestimable value and importance of the health 

 and the very lives of those fellowmen who everywhere move, 

 and breathe, and speak, and act around us ? What are any, or 

 what are all, of these objects when contrasted with the most 

 precious and valued gift of God to earth — human life ? And 

 what would not the greatest and most successful followers of 

 such varied callings give out of their professional stores for the 

 restoration of health and for the prolongation of life, if the first 

 were once lost to them, or if the other were merely menaced 

 by the dreaded and blighted finger of disease? . . . Nature 

 has happily ordained it as one of the great la.ws on which she 

 has founded our moral happiness, that the performance of love 

 and kindness to others should be a genuine and never-failing 

 source of pleasure to our own hearts. It is thus strictly as well 

 as poetically true : 



' That seeking others' good, we find our own.' 

 " The exercise of the profession is, when followed out in its 

 pioper spirit, a continued realisation of active beneficence, and, 

 in this view, a continued source ot moral satisfaction and 

 happhiess to the generous heart. The objects and powers of 

 your art are alike great and elevated. Your aim is, as far as 



